Tourism Resilience Book Launch.

Minister of Tourism and Co-Chair of the Global Tourism Resilience and Crisis Management Centre is on his second stop in a global book tour for the recently released book on tourism resilience, recovery, and global development.  Minster Bartlett convened with the High Commissioner to the UK, HE Seth George Ramocan and former UNWTO Secretary General, Taleb Rifai to speak about tourism resilience while in the UK.

The book, entitled ‘Tourism Resilience, Recovery and Sustainability for Global Development: Navigating COVID-19 and the Future” is edited by Executive Director, GTRCMC, Professor Lloyd Waller and Hon Edmund Bartlett.  It was launched in February as part of an International Summit on Tourism Resilience.

At the UK launch attended by diplomats, academia, industry leaders and media, Minister Bartlett presented a copy of the book to His Excellency, Seth George Ramocan, High Commissioner to the UK and said, “Resilience planning and preparation are crucial for the future success of nations and communities and this new academic resource will provide a truly valuable framework for understanding and building the role of tourism resilience and its value for building global sustainability and faster economic recovery.”

Written in a comfortable vernacular, both for consumer and trade, the book includes case studies, best practices and lessons learned during the pandemic as well as experiences of different destinations in working towards resilience.

GTRCMC Board Member and Prof. Crisis/Disaster Management at Bournemouth University, Prof. Lee Miles explained the importance and relevance of the new publication, “The impact of Covid 19 has demonstrated a pressing need to revisit many of the underlying assumptions that we have traditionally made about the durability and strengths of tourism and to connect debates between tourism and resilience more clearly.”

Executive Director of the GTRCMC, Professor Lloyd Waller said, “The book includes reviews of activity that countries trialled in the pandemic. For example, Jamaica had the resilience corridors and Las Vegas had resilience bubbles. We did a comparative analysis of those destinations to review the value and impact of different strategies to support future decision-making.”

Professor Waller confirmed the book also features emerging challenges that the tourism space will have to contend with in the future, including cybersecurity and crime, the dark web, and cryptocurrencies.  Emerging options is another key area of focus in the book. “We looked at how non-fungible tokens (NFTs) can be used as a mechanism to advertise destinations, especially among millennials and Generation COVID (Gen C),” he said.

Next stops on the global book tour include New York, Washington DC, Dubai, UAE, Athens, Greece, Riyadh, KSA and Sophia, Bulgaria.  “Tourism Resilience, Recovery and Sustainability for Global Development: Navigating COVID-19 and the Future” is available for purchase on Amazon, and Barnes and Noble.